


Enough.

by paigepussgurka



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Could be seen as platonic or romantic but originally written as romantic but maybe one-sided, Kingdom Hearts III Spoilers, Minor Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Riku (Kingdom Hearts)-centric, Riku Loves Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 06:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19806904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paigepussgurka/pseuds/paigepussgurka
Summary: In that moment, there isn’t another choice. For someone else, maybe. But not for him. He just hopes it's enough.(Riku's stream of consciousness/internal monologue during a certain scene in KH3)





	Enough.

In that moment, there isn’t another choice. 

For someone else, maybe. Maybe they’d run or cry or rally their companions to face the demon tide. Maybe they’d close their eyes and let go.

But the moment that Sora falls to his knees, lacking the will to stand, Riku’s choice is already written. It’s written and the ink is dry. In a way, it’s the easiest choice. It always has been. Other choices had always been hard, but not this one. It’s a choice he’s been making his entire life. Well, most of it. He made a stumble once. Chose different. Chose  _ wrong _ . But never again. He’s been repairing the damage of that misstep for two years, trying to scrub the ink from his hands. But the stains are deep and dark, and now, with the tide before him, they’re eternal. Cleaning time is over. 

A part of his heart longs for a kinder tide. The one that lulled him to sleep for the first 15 years of his life, that he and Sora chased to find shells and sand crabs. He hopes it will help his mother sleep, too, after this. He hasn’t seen her in...a long time. Too long. More choices, more ink. One day, he hopes it’s far away, she’ll find him in the next world. The final world. He can apologize then. Apologize for running, for getting into trouble, for making her worry. For not having the courage to come back. He hopes the tides will be kindest to her. She doesn’t deserve this choice.

But it’s not about deserving any more. Nobody deserved what Riku did, what he wrought upon his home and his friends and everything that ever mattered in his arrogance, his weakness. His arms are stained with ink to his elbows and he doesn’t deserve to be the only one Sora has left. He doesn’t deserve to comfort Sora, to touch him and stain his light with his terrible hands, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve to have basked in Sora’s light for so long. The light that still burns so brightly, so hotly, even when Sora can’t see it, can’t feel it. Riku doesn’t deserve a lot of things. But maybe he deserves this. 

This is the final choice. The last in a long line, many cloaked and dark. It won’t fix them. Won’t replace or repair them. It won’t wash his hands. But it’s the only choice he has. Maybe the only one he’s ever had, if all this destiny talk is true. He’ll take what he can get. 

When his fingers curl into a fist, his wrists ache. When he stands, his knees crack. His body hurts. He’s tired. They’ve been fighting so hard, for so long. They’re too young. But the ink is a hundred years dry and it’s time to go.

“Sora.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice. Looking at Sora, all the aches and the pain fade. There is only light. The light that his moth heart had been drawn to, enraptured with, from the start. He feels a thousand memories, a thousand forgotten whispers and smiles, flood through him to the smell of salt and paopu. And then there is only his choice. And he’s only ever chosen Sora.

“You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.” It’s as close as he can get to goodbye.

He doesn’t wait for Sora to look up, doesn’t think his craven heart could bare it. As he paces forward, his feet feel heavy and he feels eyes on his back. He grips Braveheart a bit harder and tries to be worthy of its name. His mind quiets and he feels his body slip into position, into a dance he’s done a hundred thousand times. The tide takes notice of him and he has time to take one last breath before his right arm tenses. A hundred admirations coated in gentle teasing about the strength in his arms flow through his mind. His moth heart fluttered for those words. And he strikes.

The light that glints off of Braveheart is blinding. Every muscle in his body begins screaming at him.  _ Turn back! Too much! Stop! _ He doesn’t. He can’t. The dark tide begins to wash over his boots, his gloves. His arms are turning as dark as they’ve felt, as the stains only he could see. As the darkness spreads closer and closer to his eyes, he swears he can hear his and Sora’s heartsong swell in his ears. He doesn’t worry whether this was the right choice. He doesn’t feel scared. He doesn’t worry that he’s being taken from the light. He knows he’ll find Sora again. In this world or the next, he always does. He only hopes it’s enough. 

When he’s finally swallowed by the tide, at least he falls asleep to the heartsong. And that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna come right out and say I've never played KH myself, but I watched my boyfriend play through a good chunk of them and have researched my way through the rest. I'm a sucker for Riku and stream of consciousness. There's a lot going on in that kid's head (even if KH's sometimes...awkward cutscene directing makes it hard to see) and in this scene from KH3 his body language was saying even more that I felt like I wanted to flesh out. Hope it isn't too hard to read, I was getting a bit out there with fragments and commas and whatnot. I also have only published one other piece of writing in the last handful of years (written a good amount, finished very little, published nothing) and I'm trying to get back in the swing. This fandom (and Soriku) have hooked me in and I've read about 30 pages deep in the Soriku tag so it was time to add something myself. Thanks for reading!


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